


The Sky within your Eyes

by Skathii



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Abuse (not graphic), Emotional Abuse (first chapter only), F/M, Sarah's all grown up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-18 21:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7331935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skathii/pseuds/Skathii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after her run in with the labyrinth, Sarah finds herself in yet another situation where she must call on the help of that mysterious Goblin King. What will he demand this time in exchange for her freedom?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Once upon a time, there was an empress…_

 

Today, Sarah would leave.

Her bag was packed with only her personal essentials: waterstained journals and yellowed books, favorite plastic bracelets and silver heirloom pendants, a toothbrush and some clothes. The rest of stuff left in the apartment just junk, tying her to a life she did not want any part of. Everything she really needed could fit into this suitcase.

 

_It had been exactly 52 days since the first time he hit her._

 

After only a couple of months of dating, Andrew asked her to move into his closet of an apartment behind the train tracks. Sure, Sarah had felt a bit little rushed and a lot a bit pressured, but even though she had gotten along better with her dad and stepmom in recent years, she never quite felt like part of the family, never fit in quite as well as Toby. They let her keep her childhood room intact, though. Thankfully she would have a place to go.

She knew she should have left after the first time. But he had been drunk and he had apologized and _he loved her, didn’t he_? Or was she just taking that for granted?

Her fingers flicked over her last “important thing”, a little red book. _The Labyrinth_. Her Labyrinth. In places the gold embossing had been worn back to red after countless nights of reading it, but it never told Sarah what she really wanted to know. Since leaving for college, none of her friends had appeared to her again, not Hoggle, not Ludo, not any one of them. And what of their king, Jareth, the man who had spirited her away and whose hand she could still feel pressed against her back? She had not seen an owl outside her window for years.

 

_And thus isolated and weakened, the empress allowed her kingdom to crumble and her will to wane._

 

Though it was the first time he had hit her, it was not to be the last. ‘This is what I deserved,’ she told herself. ‘I shouldn’t have crossed him. I shouldn’t have made him mad.’

Her family had called her so many times and so did other human friends, but Sarah ignored them, fearing his anger. It was like walking through life as a numb corpse, focusing only on the step before you.

 

And then one day as she was cleaning their apartment, the little red book plummeted from the top shelf of the bookcase on its own, falling on its spine. She did not need to see the cover to know what it was.

 

_For my will is as strong as yours…_

 

What had she become? What had she let a man do to her?

 

 _And my kingdom is as great_ …

 

She had had so many dreams, and she let someone else take them from her. She had let someone take who she was from her after she had fought so hard for her future as a child. Had she forgot all she had learned and all she had done?

 

No more.

 

_You have no power over me._

 

She would escape and fight and strive and win.

 

_The curse on the empress had been broken by none other than the empress herself._

 

She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and glanced around. Sarah had chosen this day to leave knowing that Andrew would be away for a few hours. She wouldn’t let him control anymore, but she also knew it would be easier and safer to leave while he was gone. It would give her time to pack, to plan, without his manipulation or anger.

“Well feet let’s start-- oh! Lancelot!” The old bear laid face down on the couch. He was one of the few pieces of her childhood she had brought with her to the apartment. How could she forget about him when he had kept her company these last lonely months? Sarah swooped over and grabbed at him, but just as her hand reached his little leg, the sound of the dead lock unbolting echoed through the room.

Andrew had come home early.

She tensed up, clutching Lancelot to her chest just as she would have done as a girl. The front door swung open. Her hand quaked, cold as a corpse’s. Surprise registered on his face. She had told him that she wouldn’t be at home, that she had to work late, that he should take his time at the bar after his office closed down.

And then came the anger. Sarah knew this expression well. His eyes narrowed as he shot a hateful glare at her suitcase and then at her full on, knowing her intent to leave. Funny how he could claim to love her and yet look at her like this. Black dots twirled around the edges of her peripherals. Andrew took one short step toward her, and Sarah remembered to breath. The trembles in her hand stopped.

 

 _But the empress would not back down in the face of any perils_.

 

Sarah thought she knew what to do, how to disengage from him, and even how to make her escape from the situation. What she didn’t expect was his boiling fury, scalding in both dialogue and physicality. Basic self defense helped her evade some clumsy punches in her direction, but when he shoved her against a wall, her ankle twisted in an unnatural position and sent her sprawling to the floor. It was not broken, but it was also not exactly ideal for her to run as her instinct was urging her to do.

_What is it that I would have said as a child? As a stupid, naive child wanting someone to save me?_

He loomed over her crouched position, blocking out the single light in the room, leaving her in shadow. His fingers slipped under her chin. She tried to flinch away, but he jerked her face up to look at him.

“You think you can just leave?” Andrew scoffed. “You’re not worth anything without me.”

 _As though some stupid wish would help me now_.

Sarah couldn’t help the bitter bark of a laugh that lept out of her throat at the thought. Andre clenched his fist.

“Are you laughing at me? You dumb bitch!” His arm realed backwards. Sarah closed her eyes for the blow, not even bothering to cover her face with her arms.

_I wish the Goblin King would come for me. Right now._

But the pain never came, replaced instead with a wisp of soft feathers against her cheek.

A strangled cry of pain rang out, and Sarah dared to open one eye. Before her, a sea of black feathers engulfed her with their glistening sheen. _No_ , Sarah thought as her eyes roved up. The feathers were attached to a black cloak which billowed with the sharp wind that filled the room and covered her. It framed broad shoulders and above that, a waterfall of blonde hair. Andrew stood a couple of feet back from where he had been, his arm still raised for the punch, but now with a black gloved hand holding it back. Hard. Ferociously. Like it wanted to break  Andrew’s hand into a thousand pieces. Sarah frowned in dazed confusion as she studied the muscles that showed through a tight black shirt on the figure that stood between them, not able to completely comprehend what she was seeing.

“What took you so long to call me?”

The man’s voice resonated in her ear honey sweet, with only a tinge of an emotion she couldn’t quite associate with it, not yet.

“Sarah.”

And with just that word, her breathing hitched and her fingers became ice and her body became both novel and familiar as she regained the full use of her senses, and she believed in her own eyes and ears.

 

_It’s him._

 

“To the oubliette for you, pig of the land of stench,” he said before pushing Andrew away with a kick to the ribs.

“And as for you…” He turned toward her with a furious tilt in his eyebrows but a smirk upturning the crevices of his lips. A crystal ball appeared in his hand, dancing between his fingers. The world blurred around her as the floor fell away, and she spiraled into a velvet abyss.

  
  
  
_At last the empress was free. Or was she?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for taking the time to read the first chapter of my newest fanfiction.  
> Labyrinth came out thirty years ago, and yet still has such a fond place in our hearts.  
> I decided to write about Sarah being in a situation that many of us face growing up. Abuse and isolation is all too common. I did my best to write it about it in a sensitive way, drawing on my own experiences and others, but if you have any suggestions (or you just need to share your own story) feel free to let me know. I would like to be as respectful as I can to others but portray it in a realistic way.  
> This chapter contains a lot of background and exposition, so the writing style is a bit different from how the other chapters will be.  
> I have never written a story as long as this, though it is far shorter than ones others have written, so I hope you enjoy it. I'm hoping to fit in as many romantic tropes as possible to fulfill my own girlish crush on the Goblin King. But don't worry. Sarah will have her time to shine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to post this for the holiday weekend (though I'm still working on the next chapter!).  
> This chapter is a bit emotionally up and down, which I didn't expect but suppose is natural for people trying to sort out their feelings.

The warmth of a beam of light upon her face pried Sarah awake from her slumber. She rubbed her forehead and turned to the side without opening her eyes, not wanting to get out of bed quite yet. It felt like she was lying a mattress of lush moss and grass, tinged with the scent of earth and soft upon her cheek. Sarah clung to her puddle of sunlight. When was the last time she felt so relaxed and rest? Andrew never let her sleep in anymore.

 _Andrew_.

Her eyelids darted open. Where was he? More importantly, where was _she_?

She sat up to take in her surroundings. Chiffon curtains draped the king-sized bed Sarah had been sleeping in only a few moments ago. Though they were drawn, their sheerness allowed her to glimpse outside to the stone walls of the room. A cherry wood night stand stood next to the bed with legs carved in grand curls. Next to the arched window was a loveseat with a dark figure in it. She blinked, and the shadow was gone. Perhaps her dreams still clung to her, making her see what was not there.

Sarah shook her head. No, she knew where she was. Though she had not been in this particular room before, the decor gave away the hand of its creator. She smiled at the glitter which caked the wall and could be seen even through the flimsy curtain. Her hand ran over the gold embroidered sheets before pulling them away from her. She could not say in bed all day, as tempting as that sounded. A certain someone was surely expecting her.

It was not until she reached her bare foot towards the stone floor that she realized she was not dressed in the same clothing she had been in. A flowing white skirt reached past her knees that would billow out in beautiful waves with even the smallest of motions. Where she had worn a faded t-shirt earlier, a silk bodice laced her in with delicate ribbons and was finished with enormous puffy sleeves circa 1983. Had someone rolled her in glitter as she slept or was it just in the very air here? Either way, he had not lost his flair for the melodramatic.

The door to the room was nearly twice as tall as Sarah and outfitted with a door knob the size of a frisby. With a heave it swung open. So, it seemed she was not prisoner to this room at least. She padded out into the hallway.

Although Sarah thought it could not have been later than ten in the morning when she looked outside the window of the room, within the castle, it could have been midnight. On the left side, candle sconces lined the halls as did man sized paintings of female goblins and exuberant parties, finished with swooping golden frames. It looked more inviting than what little Sarah could see to the right of her. There, the shadows stretched long and deep, daring her to climb into their inky pools, expelled only by a singular torch hanging on the wall. The longer Sarah gazed into the darkness, the more it seemed to shift and move like a living thing. She turned back to the left and stepped forward.

 

_Don’t go that way._

 

Her eyebrows furrowed as she stopped herself from going forward. This seemed like the path that would lead to a king, but…

 

_Never go that way._

 

Something told her she was just taking that for granted. Things were not always what they seemed in this place, after all. She should have remembered that from the first time, she thought. Sarah grabbed the torch off the wall and dived into the shadows to the right.  A laugh bounced off the stone walls around her.

“Very good Sarah. Now come to me.” She smiled to herself before breaking into a sprint.

  
  


The tunnel wound and wound without any other openings, or at least Sarah couldn’t see any outside of her bubble of light emitted by the touch in her hand. A constant breeze urged her forward, filling her nose with a smell of both sand and roses. Unlike her first time in the labyrinth, she couldn’t decipher if it was an optical illusion keeping her from progressing or if she was on the right path.

Broken table legs, bits of chandeliers, and used candles lined the edges of the corridor. Sarah grimaced at a rattle someone had tossed carelessly on the ground. It looked like one Toby had as a kid. Maybe it was even the exact one. Who knew how long it had been here.

In here, Sarah had no idea how time flowed. Her dash could have last for an hour or it could have only been a few minutes. One thing she did know was that whoever dressed her failed to supply with any sort of footwear, which proved precarious amidst the junk that lined the floor. One rogue step could lead to a goblin dagger to the toe.  

At last, Sarah hunked down on the ground, avoiding a nest of cobwebs and glass shards, and let herself rest.

“Why do you have to be so blasted mysterious, you silly Goblin King?” She said with a huff and ran her hands through her hair.

“Am I, indeed, tra la la?” There it was again, his voice. Sarah squinted, trying to penetrate the lush curtain of darkness that surrounded her and find where he might be. She failed to notice the click of a latch until the floor collapsed underneath her, and she plunged through the trapdoor.

  
  


Please not an oubliette, she thought as she tumbled further down the stone shoot.  Sarah broke her fall with a thunk onto a cushion that ballooned out around her. Dust flew into the air, sending her into a fit of sneezes. She shifted onto her knees and glanced about her. A thousand tiny eyes greeted her, staring at her from the corners of the room. Layers of voices clamored from all directions each fighting to be heard, engulfing her in a sea of noise that made her head pound. Sarah closed her eyes and covered her ears. It did little to block the cacophony.

“She’s not a baby. Who is she?”

“It’s that girl again.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“I saw her sleeping in the master’s room.”

“Hush I want to hear what she has to say.”

“Does she even know how to talk?”

“Hey--”

“Why don’t you just--”

“She smells like--”

“Silence.” The single word roared over all others, and as soon as it was spoken, the tumultuous chaos dissipated. Sarah’s ears rang from its ghost, so that now the silence felt like a din. Her hands fell from their perch on her ears  to the cushion below. She opened her eyes one at a time, as though the goblin horde might continue their dizzying roar.

“Leave us.” That voice. With only that commanded, the masses that surrounded her shuffled out of the room, though their eyes remained ever fixed on her. Sarah looked up.

It was him.

From his perch on his half moon throne, two crystalline eyes peered back at her. He leaned against one arm of the almost chair, head resting on his gloved hand and one leg crossed over the other. Tight black leather pants clung to his thin legs. Ruffles spilled over his white shirt. From her vantage point, Sarah could see light reflect off the golden pendant at his neck.  Her eyesight blurred for a moment as tears she didn’t know she had bubbled up to the surface.

He looked exactly the same as he had, all those years ago. Only she had changed.

“Jareth.” The word escaped her lips like a caress, and she could not keep the hint of emotion from her voice. The edges of his lips crooked up in what she imagined to be a smile but could not be certain as they tightened into a grimace. She took an unsteady inhale of breath. A crystal ball appeared at the fingertips of his free hand.

“Sarah.” The single word hit her like a winter breeze, icy around the edges. It was not exactly the warm welcome she had hoped for. He diverted his gaze to the ball in his hand. “How long, exactly, has it been, hm?”

She raised her eyebrow in confusion, trying to clear the leftover haze in her mind. Was he… mad? The crystal ball in his hand cracked from the pressure of his grip.

He let it slide down his arm, down the chair, and to the floor. It rolled toward her, stopping at the edge of the cushion.

“Jareth, I—“ Sarah bit her lip. “I mean, it’s so good to—“

“Forgot about us, did you?” His hand raised to his temple as his thick eyelashes fluttered closed. Her own widened.

“No, I—“ Sarah scrambled to her feet, her body moving too quickly for her mind. Her head still throbbed from the deafening sounds of the goblins from earlier, amplified by her sudden jerk upwards. A dark tint invaded the edges of her vision. On the too soft cushion, her feet could not find steady ground.  The floor tilted toward her. She closed her eyes. Her body tensed in preparation of the impact on the cold stone beneath.

It never came.

An arm snaked around her waist, catching her in mid fall. A second later, another coiled around the crook of her knees. Her stomach lurched at the unexpected motion of ascension but stilled as she stilled, settled against a waterfall of soft silk and warmth. Safe. Nestled against… against _what_? She recoiled from the tender cocoon, eyes bolting open.

He was entirely too close. His chest, which she had been resting her cheek on but a second ago. His face, which had settled into a strange sort of expression, not anger but something just as intense. His lips, which were only a few short inches away from her own.

His hand reached up to brush against her jawline. Sarah flinched away from the touch. He wasn’t about to strike her, she knew, but she couldn’t help the defensive action. Jareth’s eyes, which had been so clear, darkened as his eyebrows furrowed.

“What has he done to you?” He asked as gently as a breath, though Sarah could feel the heat behind the words.

She never had wanted him to see her like this. Weakened. Stupid. All this time, she hoped that maybe her friends here really had forgotten her, so they wouldn’t see what she had become. Especially not him. Did he watch her in the Above ground? Did he watch as Andrew hit and abused her? She had hid it from everyone, but she couldn’t hide it from him. Her face reddened.

“So what? Have you come to laugh at me? Admonish me? Waive it in my face?” She spat out.

“Sarah I would never--” but he choked the words down. His lips tightened into a line. Jareth’s boots clicked on the stone floor as he strode back towards his throne, Sarah in his arms. “If you’ll remember, you’re the one who called me to come take you away.”

The anger drained from her body. She had asked him to come, to save her.

“I could just keep you forever, precious thing,” he whispered into the tresses of her hair. His arms tightened, clutching her closer to him. He smelled of honey and stardust. “But I won’t.”

Jareth set her down on the floor as though she were a piece of glass that could shatter if he didn’t hold her gently enough. A book case lined with ancient looking tomes stood at her left while his throne towered to her right. Instead of lounging on it again though, Jareth paced in front of it. Sarah didn’t think he even knew he was doing it.

“So, what? Am I to run the Labyrinth again?” She asked, wrapping her own arms around her waist. His head jerked up to look at her, like he had already forgotten she was there. The smile that spread on his face didn’t reach his eyes.

“No, I think not. Not quite fair, considering you beat it once already.” His hand dug into his shaggy hair. Sarah wondered how it would feel to run her own hands through it. “No, I have an entirely different task for you. That is, if you wish to win your freedom.”

“Of course I do!” She rebuked.

“Truly?” He closed the distance between them. “You could have your dreams Sarah. I could give them to you, if you’d only stay here. With me.”

Her hands trembled at her sides, growing a bit colder with each passing second. She fisted them and turned towards the bookcase.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“And why is that?” His warm breath brushed the back of her neck. A shiver wracked her shoulders. “No screaming child, nothing to tie you down.”

“I just. I mean.” Sarah fumbled for the words, for some excuse. “I just can’t.”

Jareth sighed against her neck.

“Very well then.”

She focused the novels on the bookcase before her. Anything to keep from thinking about the brush of his lips against her throat. Almost none of them had labels or titles.

Wait. There, on the top shelf, sat a small red book. She squinted at it, trying to make out the gold lettering on the spine. Could it be? Sarah reached for the all too familiar book, balancing on the balls of her feet for a higher perch. Just a little higher. Her fingers grazed the spine and pulled it out from between a nest of loose papers. She yanked it towards her, about to free it from its captivity on the shelf, when she felt the warmth that came with a body pressed close against her. Sarah paused long enough in surprise for his gloved hand reached over her own and shoved the book away from her grasp, too far back on the shelf for her to reach again.

“None of that now Sarah. No time to linger over that old story.” Jareth wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her a safe distance away, only yards from his throne. Sarah had never seen the throne so close up, with its strange crescent shape.

She would have studied it more, had not his fingertips dragged along her collarbone. If he kept going, she feared he would feel the thunderous pumps of her heart. He pulled his hand away at the hollow of her neck, though he did not move his body. Her lungs emptied of the breath she did not realize she had been holding.

He flicked his wrist in a long flourish, another crystal ball in his hand. Sarah blinked wildly at him. When had it appeared there? The smallest of smiles graced his lips as he soaked in her confusion. The crystal rolled viscously around his hand, as if it were not subject to even gravity.

“Sarah, if you wish to be free, then you must answer my riddles three.” A ruffle from his shirt grazed her chin with its silky touch as he moved.  “Or rather, my quests three. Do not expect that I will go easy on you. They will be difficult. They will test you as you have not been tested here before.”

“I would expect no less from the King of Goblins,” she retorted, one hand coming to rest on her hip. He stared at the crystal in his hand, not sparing one glance in her direction. It was so close that she could grab it from him.  Maybe she should, if only to feel his gaze on her once more.

Sarah blanched at that thought. This was the _Goblin King_ , not some silly boy to go weak in the knees for. What was she thinking? Her eyes shifted to look at his hand, at the crystal ball, anywhere but his face. In her shame, she almost didn’t notice the flickers of shapes that seemed to dance within the crystal. _Almost._ There was no way she was imagining the figures that clouded the crystal. His voice startled her from her reverie.

“You must first bring to me a trinket made of no stone nor jewel nor metal nor wood.”

Jareth took a step away from her.

“What sort of trinket do you mean? Uh, a key chain? Or maybe a necklace?” She ran a hand through her hair, grabbing at the locks closest to her skull. The crystal ball quicken in his fingers. If she strained her eyes, she could have sworn she could see the outline of something circular in its depths before it changed to another shape that was more solid and gnarled.

“Once you have done so, I then would have you fetch for me a rock wrapped in moonlight.”

She let out a laugh that sounded more like a cough.

“Seriously? Moonlight?” Did he mean a moonrock? But that wasn’t wrapped in light. She wasn’t sure that was even possible.

He turned his back towards her, taking another long step on his lean legs, though the orbit of the crystal ball remained within her view, pirouetting around his fingers like water.

“And finally, I wish to know the scent of a flower that blooms amongst the putrescence.” She groaned audibly. What was he even talking about?

Anger flared in her chest and spread to her toes. Coming back here, to the Labyrinth had felt like… like she was returning to a place she didn’t even know she missed, a home she didn’t even know she had. Seeing him again had been-- well, she wasn’t quite sure yet what it had been, but she couldn’t exactly deny her relief that it was _him_.

He meant to give her impossible tasks. He meant for her to fail. He had told her that he could be cruel, but she had thought-- she had hoped-- that they had moved beyond that declaration.

The worst of it was that she had no idea what it all meant, at least to him.

The crystal ball stopped as his fingers tightened around it. Clear blue eyes were upon her once more, appraising her from over his shoulder. An eyebrow shot up.

“What? Don’t you think you can do it, Sarah?” He slowed at her name, his tongue caressing each syllable. Goosebumps appeared on the back of her arms.

“You know I can.” Heat bubbled up from beneath each word.

His lips quirked up.

“That’s my girl.” With one more stride, Jareth closed the distance between himself and the throne, but did not sit down or turn back to Sarah. “You have thirteen hours to complete my quests. Thirteen more hours until you’ll be mine.

“Now go.”

His right arm shot out with contained ferocity, fingers releasing the crystal from his grasp. It smashed against a stone wall with an echoing crack that roved around Sarah’s mind before a burst of light from the crystal engulfed the room. Looking at it was like staring into the ocean on a summer day, the reflection of light beautiful but blinding. She couldn’t bring herself to look away or shield her eyes with her hands, to protect her retinas from its sweet sting.

She didn’t need to.

The world swam in black, a light pressure resting against her head. She could feel the worn leather of gloves covering her eyes, pressed against her brow and nose and temple, and the tickle of hair against her face as he leaned in closer to her from behind, though he had stood only a moment before at his throne.

“Foolish girl.” It passed through his lips like the gentle stroke of fingers along velvet. Her eyes closed with a shudder as she let herself breathe the emotion of his words.

A dry breeze lapped at her face, bits of sand pulling at her skin. She chanced a glance around.

He was gone. So too were his castle and subjects.

In their place stretched before her the crumbling walls of the labyrinth.


End file.
